RACING: Aussie wins Asia Talent Cup Race
Townsville teen makes ATC historyQueensland youngster Billy Van Earde has become the first Australian to celebrate victory in the Asia Talent Cup, winning the second race of the curtain-raising round held as a support category to the opening round of the MotoGP World Championship in Qatar.
It wasn’t an easy weekend for the Aussie who had to recover from hefty off during to practice which left him unconscious, albeit unhurt, on Friday.
He gathered it up to qualify on the second row of the 18-strong grid and scored a credible seventh-place finish in the opening race. A strong start in the second saw the Townsville teen mixing it with the two top-placed finishers from race one, Haruki Noguchi and Mario Aji, before it became a two-rider battle for the win with race one-winner and 2017 runner-up Noguchi from Japan.
Van Earde led the last seven laps of the 14-lap race and held off a slipstream from the Japanese challenger to claim the win by just 0.013 seconds.
“It was nice to see an Australian winning an Asia Talent Cup race for the first time [in this] race,” ATC Director and HRC MotoGP team boss Alberto Puig said. “I think it was a nice race.
“Noguchi is probably the most experienced rider but I’m happy because from yesterday to today, they improved the lap times and there were more guys in the top group.”
Van Earde currently sits in second place in the standings, 11 points down on Noguchi and just one point clear of Aji.
Fellow Australian rider Senna Agius finished the opening round with a 13-6 scorecard to sit ninth overall.
Round two will be held this weekend (March 23-25) at the Chang International Circuit in Thailand as an undercard to the WorldSBK round.
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